the video above is the commercial for season 2 episode 3 of the popular Japanese TV drama 家売るオンナ逆襲 /“Ie Uru Onna Gyakushuu” (”Your Home Is My Business! Counterstrike”), which just aired tonight...
One-third of my life. That's how much of my life I've lived outside of America. My so-called "home country."
Happy Asexual Awareness Week! I hope you, reader, are doing well. Last month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with two activists in Japan to shoot this interview about a topic that is pretty dear to me; that is, about the current state of the asexual community in Japan. It goes without saying that everything that’s said in the video is nothing but the experiences and opinions of three people and should NOT be mistaken as being representative of the experiences or opinions of everyone, but at the same time, who better to ask than two of the most active and dedicated people that I know in what is essentially the current hub for ace activity in Japan (Tokyo)? In this 23-minute and 10-question long (bear with me) interview, I sit down with 21 year old YouTuber, ace activist and friend, Nakaken of Seisei Doudou / 性性堂堂, as well…
cw: non-consensual touch and invasion of personal space this past Friday say the TV premiere of 「やがて君になる」 / “Yagate Kimi ni Naru” (“Bloom Into You”), a new anime based on the on-going manga of the same name by 仲谷鳰 / Nio Nakatani. while those who understand Japanese will benefit from the trailer shown above (and here, have another one), continue reading if you’re able to stomach my rudimentary rendition of the basic premise of the anime and what happened in the first episode that has me clinging to my seat in the hope that this particular series may not be your typical 百合 / yuri (sapphic / lesbian) story, but rather an aro/ace coded, mixed orientation ‘love story’. a story about two girls– one an avid reader of romance manga who struggles with having never once experienced for herself the love she reads about, the other having never experienced attraction…
the following post was written for the May 2018 Carnival of Aces on the subject of “Nuance & Complexity“. it may or may not be cleaned up and cross-posted to the YouTube channel Queer As Cat in the future. —— some feel that people in (English-speaking, anglophone) ace communities are “overthinking” things. that the amount of words and identities (also referred to as “microlabels”) which have been coined in such communities is not only “overdoing it,” but even potentially harmful. i’d hope that this would go without saying (but understand that it doesn’t), that i disagree with the former and vehemently reject the latter. regardless of whether i or you or that random person over there petting the stray cat that’s out in the street right now feel such terminology to be useful to us personally, the fact remains that others do and there is immense value in that.
after years of whining and moaning about it, i’m finally doing it; i’ll be starting HRT soon– and in Japan, no less. 2014 Vesper, who made an entire video about NOT “transitioning” in Japan, is eating their words. what’s made me change my mind now? how does one start HRT in Japan? as a non-binary person?? Gender Identity Disorder??? in this video, i talk about all the above, as well as recap the “highlights” of my recent appointment with a psychologist to get diagnosed with GID; a necessary first step to [legally] starting HRT from scratch in Japan. [ cw: vague sex mention @ 11:27 ~ 11:55; reproductive body stuff ] …took me long enough to get this video up, geez.
…..annnd look what i randomly* stumbled across at the bookstore tonight. Ash Hardell’s “The ABC’s of LGBT+” in Japanese! even Amazon Japan doesn’t seem to have it yet, but somehow Kinokuniya has it? which makes absolutely no sense, but hey! not complaining. it’s a complete translation of Ash Hardell’s book, including a lot of ace and non-binary terminology such as aceflex, quoiromantic, genderfluid and maverique transliterated phonetically into Japanese approximates.** even the [English] pronouns section is translated into Japanese, which i kinda have feelings about as to how helpful that and / or phonetic translations will be for Japanese people who will be approaching this book from a cultural and linguistic context that is not the same as that of a native English / germanic or romance language speaker. that said, at a glance, there does seem to be added explaination of English grammar to help non-English speakers better understand gender…
queernigga: !!! So my friend sent me this video on growing up and dealing with antiblackness in Japan and it’s SO. REAL. It’s only in Japanese (sorry non-Japanese speakers). I encourage you to watch and share. For students of Japanese language – the dialogue is super clear and you might be surprised at how much you understand! 人権啓発ビデオ 「わたしたちが伝えたい，大切なこと ～アニメで見る 全国中学生人権作文コンテスト入賞作品～」（1/4）【差別のない世界へ】（字幕あり） i really like this up until the “you should make yourself vulnerable and explain yourself and your hurt feelings to your bully” and the subsequent, mildly offensive optimism of said bully responding with “oh geez, i never thought about or noticed your feelings. i’m sorry! i won’t do it again” bit– but eh. i’m a jaded as all fuck black gaijin living in Japan who has zero experience actually going through the Japanese school system as a student. i would say that. that aside, i do like this video. it’s easily the best…
anonymous said: Is the concept of a qpp common in the Japanese ace community? in so far as i’m aware, no. i’ve never heard of anything that could be considered to correspond to the concept of (a) queerplatonic partner(s) (QPPs) or queerplatonic relationships (QPRs) in Japan. which isn’t necessarily to say that the concept itself does not exist at all, just that if it does i don’t think it’s common and i have not seen a single word or phrase used to describe such a concept… yet.
anonymous said: i know yokohama has SHIP, an ngo which mostly does hangout type stuff, but they probably know someone ( re: this post ) !!!!! anon, thank you!! i already know of SHIPにじいろキャビン and have no idea why i didn’t even think of them at the time of answering the other ask… just further proof that i need more sleep, i guess… *sigh* anyway, as you said, SHIP is an NPO that runs the only LGBTQIA community center that i know of in Yokohama and hosts an assortment of monthly LGBTQIA events. i went to one event and checked out their community center once, but then work and finances got hectic and i haven’t been back since, sadly…. they seemed like good people, though. upon getting this ask, i immediately thought about dropping by there after work sometime to ask about counseling services, but then i went to their website…
